A giant has fallen in the SA art world

ROBYN SASSEN

Her book, Art and Artists of South Africa, remains an iconic and ground-breaking resource, and a classic in its own time. It was constructed like a visual dictionary, was revised and republished in 1983 and has since gone through four editions.

On Monday, June 4, Berman succumbed to Parkinson’s disease at her home in Johannesburg. She was 87.

Last year, Wits University conferred an honorary doctorate (honoris causa) on the art historian, which she described in an interview with the Jerusalem Post as the “climactic moment” of her career, mentioning that the first great pinnacle of her life was the vision of hundreds of copies of her newly published tome at the popular bookshop, City Books, in Johannesburg at its formal launch on November 2, 1970.

Born on July 2, 1929, Berman read art history and visual arts at Wits University, under the tuition of Professor Heather Martienssen, graduating in 1950. She later completed an honours degree in psychology at the same university and also was awarded her Licentiate in Drama through the Trinity College in London.

Effectively changing the nature of the discourse of South African art history, Berman’s book was constructed along the lines of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, a great Renaissance classic which was published in 1550. To this end, she spent literally years conducting personal interviews and generating vital primary resource material.

Berman’s Art and Artists of South Africa was criticised in more recent years because it focused on the lives and careers of white South African artists. This indeed, is a reflection on the times, both then and now, rather than on Berman’s immense research output and passion for the arts.

Her research ambit covered the important work of South African artists such as Cecil Skotnes. In establishing the Polly Street Art Centre in 1952, Skotnes represented an outreach focus on art-making for young black art practitioners before it was legitimately acceptable to do so, under apartheid rule.

Berman was a contemporary of such artists as Larry Scully, Christo Coetzee and Skotnes, known collaboratively as The Wits Group, who nursed a reputation for being revolutionary in their approach to life and art. Berman later became a critic for the publication Newscheck in the 1960s, where she worked alongside the late contemporary South African artist Robert Hodgins.

In 1965, Berman hosted a celebration of the life of Maria Stein-Lessing, an art historian of the previous generation who taught Berman as an undergraduate student, opening up her awareness of the value of African art and its aesthetics in South Africa.

Over the years, Berman also earned her chops as a critic on radio and conducted interviews, which were sharp and entertaining, informative and warm.

In her hey-day, Berman was the permanent art critic of the SABC. She was also one of the primary movers and shakers in several art-related organisations, such as the South African Association of Artists in Pretoria, the Rembrandt van Rijn Association and the Children’s Art Centre, which was based in Johannesburg.

Immensely prolific in her writing and research, Berman authored several monographs on South African artists, such as Irma Stern, J H Pierneef, Maggie Laubser and Alexis Preller. For her 80th birthday, the art history fraternity, with Berman’s friends and family, pooled its intellectual resources to create an anthology celebrating her contribution to the country and the discipline.

A close friend of Preller’s, Berman played a considerable role in the large-scale exhibition of his work, mounted by the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg in 2009, with the curatorial assistance of well-known contemporary South African artist and collector, Karel Nel.

Born Esmé Cohen, Berman married businessman Hi Berman in 1952. They had three children: David, Russell and Kathy. Tragically Russell was killed in a car accident as a teenager in 1973.

The late 1970s saw the Bermans becoming the mayoral couple of Sandton, but apartheid troubled them deeply, and they immigrated to America in 1987. After living in Los Angeles for some 16 years, the family returned to South Africa to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, shortly before the sudden death of Hi in 2003. Berman remained in South Africa.  

Berman leaves her son David, in Dallas, her daughter Kathy in Johannesburg, and two grandchildren.